Storytelling & Business Communication

Why organisations work with Tom Morley A participatory format that gets reserved, senior or fatigued audiences playing, listening and coordinating with each other inside ten minutes, not after a day of icebreakers. Twenty-five years of delivery for Vodafone, Disney, GSK, Hertz, Nokia, Cisco, Adecco and Johnson & Johnson across New York, Moscow, Johannesburg, Istanbul, Paris and London. A working artist’s read of group energy, drawn from a career on stage with Scritti Politti and studio work with David Bowie and Madness, applied to the dynamics inside a leadership offsite. A facilitation method, the 7-Step REMIX Process, that translates the in-room experience into language teams can use back at their desks the following week. Biography highlights Founder member and original drummer of Scritti Politti, the DIY-to-pop band of the 1980s. Studio and live collaborator with David Bowie and Madness. Founder of Instant Teamwork (1999), an arts-based team-building company operating internationally. Corporate clients include Vodafone, Disney, GSK, Hertz, Nokia, Cisco, Adecco and Johnson & Johnson. Author of the 7-Step REMIX Process, a personal development framework adapted from the “More To Life” programme. Charitable work for Teenage Cancer Trust, Royal Marsden Cancer Hospital, MENCAP, Save the Children, UN Women UK and Peace One Day. Biography A power-cut hit the stage during a Scritti Politti show in Berlin. Morley kept the beat going and started a vocal call-and-response with the audience. That moment, in which a room of strangers held a groove together without any technology, became the seed for Instant Teamwork, the arts-based team-building company he founded in 1999. The premise is straightforward. Trust, candour and coordination cannot be lectured into a team. They have to be experienced first, then named. Morley uses live drumming and call-and-response to put a group into a shared rhythm fast, then debriefs what just happened in terms the room can take back to work. The musical credibility is real. He was a founder member of Scritti Politti, recorded with David Bowie and performed live with Madness. The corporate work has had time to develop a method. Vodafone, Disney, GSK, Hertz, Nokia, Cisco, Adecco and Johnson & Johnson have used Instant Teamwork sessions in New York, Moscow, Johannesburg, Istanbul, Paris and London over more than two decades. Around the facilitation sits the 7-Step REMIX Process, adapted from his work with Dr K. Bradford Brown of the “More To Life” programme. It is the language Morley uses to make a participatory session repeatable for teams once the drums are gone. Key speaking topics Team cohesion and group energy Engagement and participation in hybrid teams Creativity and improvisation under pressure Communication and call-and-response as a team behaviour Motivation and collective performance Risk-taking and breaking hierarchical silos Ideal for Annual conferences and leadership offsites that need a high-energy participatory anchor HR and culture leads rebuilding engagement after restructure or remote-working fatigue Sales kick-offs and reward events looking for a shared experience rather than a panel Senior leadership groups doing trust and communication work as part of an away-day Audience outcomes An experience of collective rhythm and coordination that members of the room produced together A felt sense of how quickly a reserved group can become participatory when the format invites it A shared reference point, the session itself, that the team can call back to in meetings afterwards Language from the REMIX framework for talking about creative risk and group communication A reset on the relationship between energy in the room and decisions made later

Why organisations work with Sally Bundock BBC News chief presenter, one of nine appointed in London when BBC News and BBC World News merged in 2023. The institutional weight comes built in. Twenty years interviewing CEOs and political figures live on international television. The fluency in how senior people speak and what they actually reveal cannot be borrowed for an event. Covered the World Economic Forum, G7, G20, and EU summits as a working reporter. The geopolitics and macroeconomics in a brief read as familiar ground. Built her early career at Bloomberg, where she created the evening programme Bloomberg Money. Finance is a fluent register for her. Named one of the UK’s 50 most powerful part-timers by Timewise and the Financial Times, and now sits on the judging panel. Useful when the event touches flexible working or the social contract of work. Biography highlights BBC News chief presenter, fronting BBC News on BBC One and the BBC News Channel Has anchored The Briefing, Business Live, Business Today, World Business Report, and Work Life across BBC1, BBC News Channel, and BBC World News Created and presented Bloomberg Money during her tenure at Bloomberg LP from 1996 to 2002 Has reported from the World Economic Forum at Davos, G7 and G20 conferences, and successive EU summits Named one of the UK’s 50 most powerful part-timers on the Power Part Time List compiled by Timewise and the Financial Times. Now sits on the judging panel Radio credits include Wake Up To Money on BBC Radio 5 Live and the business slot on Drive Time with Simon Mayo on BBC Radio 2 Biography Live business news at 5am is one of the more demanding seats in international broadcasting. The brief is to interview the right CEO and hold a global audience through the next story. Sally Bundock has done it on the BBC for more than two decades. The credibility came up the long way. She joined Bloomberg in 1996, where she created and presented Bloomberg Money, and moved to the BBC in 2002. Twenty years on Business Live, World Business Report, Work Life, and The Briefing followed. She became one of nine chief presenters in London after the BBC News and BBC World News merger in 2023. Her beat covers the territory most boards now spend their time on: macroeconomics, geopolitics, capital markets, and the politics of trade. She has reported from Davos, from G7 and G20 conferences, and from successive EU summits. The subject matter at most senior events is not new ground. It is a Tuesday morning at work. There is also a second-track expertise. Timewise and the Financial Times named her one of the UK’s 50 most powerful part-timers in 2014, and she now sits on the panel that judges the list. That track sharpens her when an event lands on flexible working or the changing social contract between employee and employer. Key speaking topics Global economy and macroeconomic outlook Geopolitical risk and global affairs Business and finance journalism Leadership interviews and CEO conversations Future of work and flexible working Media trust in the disinformation era Ideal for Boards and executive committees convening on global economic and geopolitical risk CFO, treasury, and capital markets gatherings where the agenda is macro and the speakers are senior CHRO and people leadership audiences on flexible working and the changing social contract of work Industry conferences and high-stakes panels needing a moderator who can press a CEO without losing the room Audience outcomes A panel that lands on substance instead of safe ground, with each contributor’s actual position drawn out A reading of how the day’s macroeconomic and geopolitical story is hitting business The interview craft of a working BBC journalist applied to your senior figures Confidence that the conversation will hold its audience through to the close

Why organisations work with Ian Dunt He explains the mechanics of UK government, not the gossip: how a bill actually becomes law, where civil service capacity sits, why a policy lands or stalls. Useful to any team pricing regulatory or political exposure. His book How Westminster Works… and Why It Doesn’t became a Sunday Times bestseller and is used as a reference text by people who work in and around Parliament. That is a stronger credibility signal than a television appearance count. He brings a second, distinct intellectual track on liberalism, populism and the condition of democratic institutions, drawn from How To Be A Liberal and the Origin Story podcast. Boards thinking about long-horizon political risk get more than a UK briefing. He writes and speaks for decision-makers, not commentators. The register is direct, argued, commercially relevant, and stays away from partisan theatre. Biography highlights Columnist for The i Paper, one of the UK’s main daily political columns. Former editor of politics.co.uk, the long-running UK politics analysis site. Author of How Westminster Works… and Why It Doesn’t (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2023), a Sunday Times bestseller. Author of How To Be A Liberal (Canbury, 2020) and Brexit: What the Hell Happens Now? (Canbury, 2016). Co-host of Origin Story with Dorian Lynskey, and a founding voice on Oh God, What Now? and The Bunker, all Podmasters productions. Appointed chair of the editorial board of New Humanist magazine in 2025. Biography Most UK political coverage describes the weather over Westminster. Dunt describes the building. How Westminster Works… and Why It Doesn’t, published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in 2023 and an immediate Sunday Times bestseller, walked readers through the actual wiring: Number 10, the Cabinet Office, the civil service, the Commons, the Lords, the party machines, and the specific failure points in each. That is the unusual thing about him as a political voice. The subject is institutions, not personalities. Before the book, a long editorship of politics.co.uk gave him the beat, and a column at The i Paper gave him the public platform he still uses. He writes in plain, argued English, not lobby shorthand, which is part of why the book crossed over from political readers to the general ones. The second strand of his work sits further back from the news cycle. How To Be A Liberal, published by Canbury in 2020, is a history of liberal thought and a defence of it against nationalism and authoritarian revival. Origin Story, co-hosted with the journalist Dorian Lynskey on Podmasters, takes that same method, trace an idea to its root, then show what it has become, across subjects from neoliberalism to conspiracy theory. It is the part of his work that serious boards find most useful when the question is not what happens next week but what kind of political environment the organisation will be operating in for the next decade. In 2025 he was appointed chair of the editorial board of New Humanist, the 140-year-old rationalist magazine, which sits comfortably inside that longer-arc intellectual project. Key speaking topics UK politics and Westminster governance Political and regulatory risk for business UK-EU relations after Brexit Populism and the condition of democratic institutions Liberalism, public reason, and the information environment Media disruption and misinformation Ideal for Boards, executive teams and public affairs leads exposed to UK regulatory and political risk. Risk, compliance and government relations functions inside multinationals operating in the UK and Europe. Investor and membership audiences who want a serious read on Westminster rather than a news recap. Audience outcomes A working mental model of how UK government actually produces decisions, and where it breaks. Sharper judgement on which political stories matter commercially and which are noise. A clearer view of where populist politics is driving institutional change across Europe and the UK. An informed frame for conversations with policymakers, regulators and own-government-relations teams.

Why organisations work with Catherine Mayer She has reported on power at the most senior editorial level, as Europe Editor and Editor at Large of TIME, and then tried to rebuild it, by founding a national political party. Few speakers on inclusion have done both. Her book Attack of the Fifty Foot Women reframes gender equality as an economic and institutional argument, not a values statement, which makes it usable in a boardroom conversation about strategy and risk. She can talk about royal institutions, political parties and global newsrooms from the inside, which gives senior audiences a sharper read on how hierarchical organisations actually work. Her writing on ageing (Amortality) and grief (Good Grief) gives her authority on two subjects most workplaces handle badly: longer working lives and bereavement in the workforce. She is a working journalist by training, which shows in the room. Arguments are specific, sourced and willing to be challenged. Biography highlights Senior editor at TIME magazine from 2004 to 2015, serving as London Bureau Chief, Europe Editor and Editor at Large. Co-founder, with Sandi Toksvig, of the UK Women’s Equality Party in March 2015, and its President. Author of Attack of the Fifty Foot Women, Amortality, Charles: The Heart of a King and Good Grief. Winner of the Foreign Press Association «Story of the Year» award, 2010, and shortlisted for the Orwell Prize, 2011. Co-founder of the Primadonna Festival of ideas, writing and music, and advisory board member of NOON. Former President of the Foreign Press Association in London, 2003 to 2005; began her career at The Economist. Biography Gender equality inside large institutions has become a paradox. Reports, networks and policies have multiplied, yet the shape of senior power has moved far less than the paperwork suggests. Catherine Mayer has spent her career watching this pattern from two very different sides. For more than a decade at TIME magazine, she reported on presidents, prime ministers and royal courts as Europe Editor and Editor at Large, with her 2010 cover story on David Cameron’s first US visit winning the Foreign Press Association «Story of the Year» and her writing shortlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2011. Her biography Charles: The Heart of a King drew on years of access to the British royal household and generated international headlines for what it revealed about how closed institutions actually operate. In March 2015, with Sandi Toksvig, she co-founded the Women’s Equality Party and served as its President until the party was dissolved in 2024. Attack of the Fifty Foot Women grew out of that work and argues, in hard economic and political terms, that closing the gender gap is the single largest lever available to most societies. Amortality examines the other structural story reshaping workplaces: longer lives and the collapse of age-based expectations about careers. Good Grief, written with her mother Anne Mayer Bird after they were widowed within 41 days of each other at the start of the pandemic, has made her one of the more candid public voices on bereavement at work. She co-founded the Primadonna Festival in Suffolk in 2019 and sits on the advisory board of NOON. Senior teams book her when they want an argument about institutional change that has been tested against real media, real politics and real loss. Key speaking topics Gender equality as institutional and economic strategy Power, hierarchy and how closed institutions operate Media, journalism and political accountability Ageing, longevity and the multigenerational workforce Grief and bereavement in the workplace Founding and running a new political organisation Culture change inside legacy organisations Ideal for Executive teams and boards reviewing gender, inclusion and cultural change strategy CHROs and Chief People Officers looking beyond policy to institutional redesign Leadership conferences on media, politics and public trust Employee network summits and international women’s events with a senior audience Audience outcomes A sharper account of why most inclusion programmes stall, drawn from politics, media and royal institutions, not consultancy theory An economic and institutional case for gender equality that a CFO or board member can use A clearer view of how longer lives and multigenerational workforces change talent strategy Usable language for how organisations should talk to staff about grief and bereavement A journalist’s scepticism about the difference between corporate announcement and actual structural change

Why organisations work with Lee Warren A six-step persuasion system built from twenty years of stage performance and a Head-of-Sales career, not from a communications textbook. The only Professional Speaking Association Award of Excellence holder (2022) on most shortlists, the UK industry’s highest peer-awarded recognition. Author of a Business Book Awards finalist on presenting, which gives commercial buyers a published methodology to point sales teams toward after the keynote. A track record of named commercial outcomes from clients, including a reported 350 percent sales lift at New Scientist following his work. Booked repeatedly by Deloitte, HSBC, IBM, Pfizer, GE Capital, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, audiences that do not retain entertainers and do retain people who shift commercial behaviour. Biography highlights Bestselling author, The Busy Person’s Guide to Great Presenting; highly commended finalist, 2019 Business Book Awards. PSA Award of Excellence, 2022, the UK Professional Speaking Association’s top honour. Member of The Magic Circle for twenty years. Former Head of Sales at News International; earlier sales leadership at Eurotunnel and Hertz, including a database-led sales programme. Has delivered keynotes in more than twenty countries for Deloitte, HSBC, IBM, Pfizer, GE Capital, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Theatre work commissioned at The Almeida Theatre and the Royal Opera House (per speaker’s own biographical material). Biography Persuasion is the bottleneck most sales operations refuse to name. Pipeline tools improve, decks get tidier, training budgets rise, and conversion rates barely move. The reason is rarely the product. It is that the people in the room cannot yet make another person feel the case being made. Lee Warren built a career inside that gap. After commercial roles at Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eurotunnel, and Hertz, where he co-created the company’s first database-led sales programme, he became Head of Sales at News International. In parallel, he spent two decades performing as a member of The Magic Circle and creating work for The Almeida Theatre and the Royal Opera House. The combination is unusual: a quota-carrying sales leader who can hold a thousand-seat room. His book, The Busy Person’s Guide to Great Presenting, was a finalist at the 2019 Business Book Awards and codifies the structure he teaches to commercial teams: build the talk around the audience, not the slides. In 2022 the Professional Speaking Association named him an Award of Excellence holder, the UK’s highest peer-awarded honour for professional speakers. Clients book him for hard commercial outcomes, not for entertainment. Deloitte, HSBC, IBM, Pfizer, GE Capital, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch have repeat-booked him for sales conferences, partner meetings, and leadership offsites. New Scientist publicly reported a 350 percent sales increase after engaging him. Few presentation specialists have a number like that attached to their name. Key speaking topics Persuasion and influence in commercial settings Sales communication and pitching Presenting and executive communication Business networking Storytelling for B2B audiences Communication under pressure Ideal for Sales kick-offs and commercial leadership offsites Partner and client conferences where the audience is buying decisions, not information Business development teams, key account directors, and CROs preparing for high-stakes pitches Leadership populations needing sharper executive communication ahead of board, investor, or town hall moments Audience outcomes A repeatable six-step structure for persuading a specific audience, applied the next working day A method for opening, structuring, and closing a pitch that does not depend on slide ware A working technique for networking rooms and conversations without scripts Renewed confidence in front of senior internal and external audiences, grounded in stagecraft, not affirmation A shared vocabulary across a commercial team for what good persuasion looks like

Why organisations work with Spencer Kelly Two decades inside the BBC’s flagship technology programme, Click, give him a working knowledge of frontier tech that very few keynote speakers can match, and a presenter’s instinct for what a general audience can absorb. He is one of the few speakers who is equally credible as a keynote on AI and emerging tech and as the host or moderator who runs the rest of the day, which reduces the number of people a conference organiser has to brief. A Cambridge Computer Science background, with an undergraduate dissertation on AI, means his explanations sit on actual technical understanding rather than on borrowed framing. He has interviewed the people audiences are most curious about, from Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer to James Cameron, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, which gives his sessions named primary material instead of recycled commentary. BBC Radio 4’s Understand: Tech & AI and the technology segment on BBC Morning Live keep him in current weekly conversation with a non-specialist audience, which is the audience most leadership teams actually resemble. Biography highlights Presenter of BBC Click from January 2006 to its final episode in March 2025, the BBC’s longest-serving technology presenter. Host of BBC Radio 4’s Understand: Tech & AI, a 10-part series first broadcast in July 2023. Presents the technology segment on BBC Morning Live. Computer Science double first from Churchill College, Cambridge, with an undergraduate dissertation on artificial intelligence. Honorary Doctor of Technology, Coventry University. Named T3 Magazine Tech Personality of the Year in 2015. Biography BBC Click ran for 25 years on BBC World News and the BBC News Channel. Spencer Kelly presented it for nearly 19 of them, from January 2006 to its final episode in March 2025. That single fact carries more weight in a leadership audience than any speaker bio summary, because it means the person at the front of the room has been tracking, testing and explaining frontier technology to a global audience continuously across an entire technology cycle. The Cambridge Computer Science training matters here. His double first at Churchill College, with an undergraduate dissertation on artificial intelligence and genetic algorithms, is the reason his explanations of AI sit on actual technical foundations rather than on metaphors. He moves fluently between the engineering reality and the boardroom question, which is exactly what most senior audiences are trying to do when they sit down at a strategy day. Beyond Click, he hosts BBC Radio 4’s Understand: Tech & AI, the 10-part series launched in July 2023, and presents the technology segment on BBC Morning Live. He has interviewed Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, James Cameron, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. T3 Magazine named him Tech Personality of the Year in 2015. Coventry University awarded him an Honorary Doctor of Technology. For an event with leadership stakes, he is unusually flexible. He delivers the keynote on AI, automation and emerging technology when that is the brief, and he hosts, moderates or runs the awards when the day needs a presenter who can carry the room and stay on the subject. The same person does both jobs to BBC standard, which is rarer than most conference programmes assume. Key speaking topics Artificial intelligence in business Emerging technology and its commercial impact Automation and the future of work Quantum computing, blockchain and the metaverse Technology hosting, moderation and awards presenting Ideal for Boards and executive teams running an AI literacy or emerging tech briefing Conference organisers who need a single host across keynote, panel and awards CIO, CTO and digital transformation leaders running annual offsites Industry awards and sector summits that want a recognisable, technically credible host Audience outcomes A clearer picture of where AI and adjacent technologies are now, separated from the marketing layer. Specific named examples of how organisations are using emerging tech, drawn from his Click reporting. A working sense of which technologies sit in the next 18 months and which sit further out. The confidence to ask sharper questions of internal teams and external vendors.

Why organisations work with Dave Noll He brings a working television creator’s instinct for what survives a pitch room, drawn from selling 60-plus series and more than 3,500 episodes to global networks. The Chopped origin story is a usable case study in persistence. The format was rejected by Food Network before becoming one of the longest-running cooking competitions on US television and earning a James Beard Award. His credentials sit outside the usual corporate speaker pool, which makes the message about creative risk land differently with sales and innovation audiences who have heard the standard versions. He frames innovation as a commercial discipline rather than an ideation exercise, focused on what gets bought, what gets renewed, and what scales internationally. Biography highlights Co-creator of Chopped (Food Network, 2009 to present); franchise inducted into the Culinary Hall of Fame. Two-time Emmy Award winner and two-time Gracie Award winner. Chopped won the James Beard Award for Best Television Series in 2012. Co-founder of Keller Noll, a New York-based format development company with international productions across Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Spain, South Africa, Turkey and the United States. Creator of America Says (Game Show Network), No Kitchen Required (BBC America), Rocco’s Dinner Party (Bravo), Beat the House (HGTV), Face The Truth (CBS) and Punchline (FOX). Signed a first-look deal with Boat Rocker in 2021, reported in Deadline. Biography Chopped was rejected by Food Network the first time it was pitched in 2007. The same concept, brought back months later, became one of the longest-running cooking competition formats on US television, has aired since 2009, was inducted into the Culinary Hall of Fame and won the 2012 James Beard Award for Best Television Series. The producer behind it is Dave Noll, co-founder of Keller Noll, a New York-based format development company he runs with Cleve Keller. Together, they have created and sold more than 60 television series and produced over 3,500 episodes, with productions filmed across eight countries and a 2021 first-look deal with Boat Rocker. His value to a commercial audience is the working knowledge of what it takes to get an idea past the people who say no for a living. That includes America Says on Game Show Network, No Kitchen Required on BBC America, Rocco’s Dinner Party on Bravo, Face The Truth on CBS, and the wider game-show and competition portfolio that the partnership has built since 2007. For sales, marketing and innovation teams, his contribution is closer to a master class in commercial creativity than a leadership talk. He works in an industry where every pitch is graded on what audiences will actually choose to watch, and brings that discipline into rooms where corporate innovation often loses contact with the customer. Key speaking topics Innovation as a commercial discipline Creative persistence and pitch resilience Turning rejected ideas into market-ready products Storytelling and format thinking for brand teams Sales performance and customer-centred creativity Team-level creative culture in deadline-driven environments Ideal for Sales and revenue leadership audiences working on creative differentiation Marketing, brand and innovation teams inside consumer-facing organisations Corporate offsites and annual kick-offs that want a non-corporate voice on creativity and commercial risk Higher education and association audiences focused on entrepreneurship and media Audience outcomes A concrete example of how a category-defining product survives repeated rejection before reaching the market A working producer’s perspective on what makes a creative idea commercially durable Practical reference points from inside one of television’s most successful format development partnerships Renewed conviction in pushing creative work through internal gatekeepers without diluting it

Why organisations work with Scott Dikkers A published method for generating creative output at volume, codified in the “How to Write Funny” series and tested over three decades of running The Onion newsroom. The founder’s view of how a $16,000 college newspaper became a national satirical brand worth multiples of that, with a defined argument about mission, culture and creative discipline drawn from “Outrageous Marketing” and “The Onion Story.” Built and runs the “Writing with The Onion” programme at The Second City in Chicago, training comedy writers who have gone on to Emmy-winning television rooms, so the keynote sits on top of a working teaching practice. A practitioner’s perspective on creativity in the age of generative AI, framed around how human writers and editors keep brand voice intact when first drafts are cheap and originality is not. Biography highlights Founder of The Onion and TheOnion.com, the world’s first humour website. Longest-serving editor-in-chief of The Onion across two tenures (1988-1999 and 2005-2008) and former General Manager and VP of Creative Development. Number one New York Times bestselling author of “Our Dumb Century,” winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor. Author of more than 30 books, including the “How to Write Funny” series, “Outrageous Marketing” and “The Onion Story.” Creator of the “Writing with The Onion” programme at The Second City training centre in Chicago. Syndicated cartoonist of “Jim’s Journal,” distributed to college newspapers across the United States from 1987 to 1997. Biography A satirical college newspaper bought for $16,000 in 1989 became one of the most recognisable brands in American media. The route from there to a national audience, a Peabody-winning news network and a publishing list that has sold millions of copies was not luck. It was a writers’ room run with unusual discipline, and Scott Dikkers ran it for most of its formative years. As editor-in-chief of The Onion across two tenures, and later as General Manager and VP of Creative Development, Dikkers built the editorial process that produced the headlines most readers can still quote. He launched TheOnion.com in 1996, the first humour website on the internet, and went on to edit “Our Dumb Century,” a number one New York Times bestseller that won the Thurber Prize for American Humor and has sold more than half a million copies. The argument behind his commercial work is set out in “How to Write Funny,” “Outrageous Marketing” and “The Onion Story.” Comedy is not magic. It is a method, and brand voice is the operational output of that method. Dikkers codified the process at The Onion, then transferred it into the “Writing with The Onion” programme he created at The Second City training centre in Chicago, where his students have been hired into Emmy-winning television rooms. For corporate audiences, the relevance is direct. Generative AI has made first drafts trivial and originality scarce. Dikkers’ keynote takes the writers’ room discipline that built The Onion and applies it to creative output, brand voice and the question every marketing and product team is now asking: how do you keep what makes your work yours when the cost of imitation has collapsed. Key speaking topics Creativity as an operating discipline Brand voice and editorial culture Humour and storytelling in business communication Building a media brand from a standing start Creative leadership in the age of generative AI Media literacy and the reading of satire Mission-led culture in creative organisations Ideal for CMOs, brand and content leaders managing creative output at scale Innovation, R&D and product leadership teams working alongside generative AI tools Communications, internal comms and L&D leaders rebuilding storytelling capability Entrepreneurship programmes and founder audiences at universities and conferences Audience outcomes A working method for generating original creative material, drawn from the writers’ room that built The Onion A clearer language for what brand voice is and how it survives contact with AI-generated content A founder’s view of how a small editorial team scaled into a national media business without losing its identity A sharper test for distinguishing satire and credible information in a feed-driven media environment A reference set of named examples from three decades of Onion headlines that a team can take back into its own creative reviews

Why organisations work with Matt Eversmann He brings a first-person, documented account of small-unit leadership inside the Battle of Mogadishu, one of the most analysed combat actions of the modern era, and translates it directly into commercial decision-making. His Bronze Star with Valor and 20 years in elite Ranger and Infantry units give credibility on team performance under stress that consulting frameworks cannot replicate. As co-author with James Patterson of three New York Times bestselling oral histories of soldiers and police officers, he has spent a decade interviewing operators about how teams hold together, which sharpens his content well beyond a single war story. His teaching record at the U.S. Army War College and the Johns Hopkins ROTC program means he speaks to leaders in the language of training and followership, not just battlefield anecdotes. He is the rare keynote a senior team will quote back to each other a week later, because the material concerns specific, named decisions, not abstractions about resilience. Biography highlights Retired U.S. Army First Sergeant, 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment; 20 years of active service. Bronze Star Medal with Valor device for actions in the Battle of Mogadishu, October 3, 1993. Portrayed by Josh Hartnett in Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down (2001); the first source interviewed for Mark Bowden’s original book. Co-author with James Patterson of Walk in My Combat Boots, Walk the Blue Line and American Heroes, all New York Times bestsellers in the Heroes Among Us series. Former Operations Sergeant at the U.S. Army War College and former instructor in Johns Hopkins University’s ROTC program. Deployed to Iraq from 2007 to 2008 as an Infantry Company First Sergeant with the 10th Mountain Division during the Surge. Biography The Battle of Mogadishu on 3 October 1993 lasted roughly 18 hours. Inside it, a young staff sergeant from the 3rd Ranger Battalion was responsible for a chalk of soldiers fast-roping into a city that had already gone wrong. That sergeant was Matt Eversmann, and the decisions he made in those hours became one of the most studied case studies in modern small-unit command. The reason that experience matters in a boardroom is not symbolism. It is that the conditions Rangers train for, incomplete information, broken communications, no time to consult upward, are the same conditions senior teams now face during cyber incidents, supply shocks and reputational crises. Eversmann teaches what holds and what fails when a plan does not survive contact. His authority on the subject extends well beyond his own service. As co-author with James Patterson of Walk in My Combat Boots, Walk the Blue Line and American Heroes, he has spent years interviewing soldiers, police officers and first responders about the texture of decisions made under load. That body of work, three New York Times bestsellers, sits behind every keynote. Before founding Eversmann Advisory in 2018, he served as Operations Sergeant at the U.S. Army War College, taught leadership in the Johns Hopkins University ROTC program, and led an Infantry Company through the Iraq Surge. The result is a speaker who can move from a specific named moment in Mogadishu to a specific question a CEO is asking about command culture, without losing either audience. Key speaking topics Leadership under pressure and in crisis Team performance in high-stakes environments Decision-making with incomplete information Accountability and followership inside elite units Trust and culture in small teams Lessons from the Battle of Mogadishu and combat command Service, sacrifice and operator stories from Walk in My Combat Boots Ideal for CEO and C-suite offsites focused on resilience, command culture and crisis decision-making. Leadership development programmes for senior operators, plant managers, regional heads and first-line commanders of large field organisations. Conferences for sectors with a high-consequence operating tempo: financial services, energy, healthcare, defence, law enforcement, and aviation. Annual sales kick-offs and partner meetings looking for a serious anchor keynote rather than entertainment. Audience outcomes A vocabulary for naming what their teams actually do well and badly when conditions go non-linear. Specific lessons from a documented combat action that translate to crisis governance and post-incident review. A clearer view of what accountability looks like at the team-leader level, distinct from individual performance. Renewed seriousness about preparation, rehearsal and standards as cultural artefacts, not HR processes. Stories with named operators and named events that senior leaders can reference back inside their own organisations.

Why organisations work with Amelia Rose Earhart Her “Aviate, Navigate, Communicate” protocol, drawn directly from aviation’s standard emergency sequence, gives organisations a practical, step-ordered model for distributing responsibility and maintaining forward momentum when conditions destabilise. The 2014 circumnavigation she planned and executed required close to $2 million in corporate partnerships across 28 organisations, custom FAA engineering approval for an aircraft modification, and 17-stop coordination across 14 countries, making her case study in mission execution verifiable and specific, not metaphorical. A genealogy investigation, published by a colleague just before her departure, revealed no traceable connection to her famous namesake and triggered public accusations of fraud; the fact that she proceeded and completed the flight gives her resilience argument a dimension most speakers cannot replicate. Learn to Love the Turbulence (2023) extends her “pilot in command” framework into a structured leadership methodology – passengers react while pilots decide – providing a reference architecture that client teams can apply long after the event. Audiences include Boeing, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, United Healthcare, Lockheed Martin, Capital One, and the United States Air Force Academy, giving her both commercial credibility and access to high-stakes operational contexts. Biography highlights Youngest woman to circumnavigate the globe in a single-engine aircraft (Pilatus PC-12 NG, 2014); first to do so in that aircraft type Self-funded and managed the 24,300-nautical-mile, 17-stop global flight, raising close to $2 million across 28 corporate partnerships and securing custom FAA engineering approval Holds private, instrument, and commercial pilot certificates Approximately 15 years as a broadcast news anchor and reporter: KUSA-TV (9NEWS, NBC affiliate, Denver) and Los Angeles television Author of Learn to Love the Turbulence (2023, with Kristin Clark Taylor); keynote clients include Boeing, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, United Healthcare, and the United States Air Force Academy Amelia Earhart Pioneering Achievement Award (2013, Atchison, Kansas Chamber of Commerce); Jaycees Top Ten Young Americans (2014) Biography Aviation has a decision protocol for moments when a flight goes wrong: aviate first, navigate second, communicate third. Amelia Rose Earhart spent two years designing a circumnavigation that would test that protocol under real conditions. Closed borders, a custom FAA-engineered fuel system, and a public genealogy scandal nearly derailed the flight before it left California. In June 2014, she departed Oakland in a single-engine Pilatus PC-12 NG. Across 17 stops and 24,300 nautical miles through 14 countries, she landed back in California on July 11. The mission required close to $2 million in corporate partnerships across 28 organisations, custom FAA engineering approval, and open-water survival training. She became the youngest woman to circumnavigate the globe in a single-engine aircraft, and the first to do it in a PC-12 NG. Her 2023 book, Learn to Love the Turbulence, codifies what that flight revealed about organisational decision-making. Preparedness, not optimism, is what keeps teams airborne when conditions deteriorate. The “pilot in command” framework – passengers react, pilots decide – is now the architecture of her work with Fortune 500 clients and the United States Air Force Academy. Before the circumnavigation, she spent approximately 15 years as a news anchor and reporter, at KUSA-TV (NBC’s Denver affiliate) and in Los Angeles. That background sharpens her communication under pressure and her ability to hold a senior audience, which are not the same skill. Key speaking topics High-stakes decision-making and mission execution Resilience and adaptive leadership Strategic planning under uncertainty Risk assessment and contingency thinking Goal setting and organisational accountability Women in aviation and STEM leadership pathways Team performance under pressure Ideal for C-suite and senior leadership teams navigating high-stakes execution challenges or strategic pivots Sales and commercial teams preparing for stretch targets or significant market disruption Women’s leadership programmes and DEI-focused executive conferences Annual leadership conferences and kick-offs requiring both narrative coherence and audience energy Audience outcomes A practical decision sequence – aviate, navigate, communicate – for maintaining clarity and distributing responsibility when a plan breaks down in real time A clearer distinction between reactive and decisive leadership, with a specific framework for building the latter as a team habit Concrete tools for forecasting risk and planning contingencies, drawn directly from aviation mission-planning discipline A reframing of disruption as a navigable condition rather than an exceptional one – and the mindset shift required to operate accordingly A reference framework from Learn to Love the Turbulence that extends the conversation beyond the event itself

Why organisations work with Phil Hansen A creativity argument grounded in a documented personal case. The shift from precision pointillism to working with tremor became the basis for a body of work, not a recovery story bolted onto a talk. A live participatory format. Audiences co-create a physical artwork during the session and keep it, which gives the message a durable internal artefact most keynotes cannot leave behind. A TED2013 main-stage talk that has sustained a public audience for more than a decade, used in classrooms and corporate learning programmes alongside the keynote. A track record across creative and commercial platforms including Adobe MAX, the Grammy Awards, Disney, the Rockefeller Foundation and the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates. A Guinness World Record portrait built from 52,901 individual dots, which functions as a tangible proof point for the discipline of working within self-imposed constraint. Biography highlights TED2013 speaker, “Embrace the Shake.” Author of “Tattoo a Banana” (Perigee/Penguin Random House, 2012) and “Phil Hansen: In Process” (2015). Guinness World Record holder for the largest connect-the-dots image (52,901 dots, 2017). Keynote and live-art appearances for Adobe MAX, the Grammy Awards, Disney, Skype, Mazda, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Million Dollar Round Table and the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates. Featured by Discovery Channel, Good Morning America, BBC and PBS. Biography A neurologist’s instruction to “embrace the shake” became the starting point for an entire body of work. The pointillism Hansen had trained on was no longer physically available to him. What replaced it was a practice built around unusual materials, unusual surfaces and the deliberate use of constraint as the brief itself, captured in the time-lapse videos that have become his signature output. The TED2013 talk made that case to a general audience. The keynote translates it for organisations: when teams treat constraint as the problem, they spend their energy on the constraint. When they treat it as the brief, they spend it on the work. The argument is simple, the proof is the practice it produced. The corporate engagements followed the talk: Adobe MAX, the Grammy Awards, Disney, Skype, Mazda, the Rockefeller Foundation. The format is unusual for a business audience because the audience makes something. A collaborative artwork is produced live in the room and stays with the client, which gives the session a physical residue most keynotes do not. The Guinness record for a connect-the-dots image of 52,901 points sits alongside the books, “Tattoo a Banana” and “In Process,” as evidence that the method is not a story about overcoming an obstacle. It is a working discipline that has produced output for two decades. Key speaking topics Creativity under constraint Innovation culture in resource-limited environments Reframing limitation as creative brief Collaborative creative practice Resilience and creative reinvention Experiential keynote and live-art performance Ideal for Innovation, R&D and product leaders building team creative practice under tighter budgets CHROs and culture leads running offsites, leadership conferences and post-restructure team events Marketing, design and brand teams looking for an experiential session rather than a lecture format Conference programmers seeking a high-energy participatory keynote to anchor a programme Audience outcomes A working definition of constraint as a creative input, with a specific example produced live in the room A physical collaborative artwork created during the session that the organisation keeps Language to use internally when teams default to treating constraint as the problem A reference case (the shake, the materials, the record) that travels easily inside the organisation after the event

Why organisations work with Rory Cowlam His 2020 book The Secret Life of a Vet (Hodder & Stoughton) makes a specific structural argument: that mental health breakdown in demanding professions is driven by systemic design – appointment length, absence of emotional processing time, cultural silence – not individual weakness. This gives audiences a framework, not just a story. As Clinical Director and co-founder of Pickles Vets, he has built a wellbeing-first practice model from the ground up, which means his arguments about workplace culture come with operational proof, not just principles. His own experience of dyslexia – sustained across a high-stakes clinical career – gives him a credibility on neurodiversity that is qualitatively different from speakers who come to the topic from coaching or consultancy. His platform as Blue Peter’s resident vet and regular contributor to BBC Breakfast and ITV’s Lorraine demonstrates an unusual ability to translate clinical complexity into plain, accessible language – directly relevant for organisations communicating sensitive topics to broad internal audiences. As a co-founder of VidiVet, a digital platform designed to extend veterinary access and reduce pressure on overstretched clinical teams, he brings a practical, innovation-oriented lens to workforce sustainability. Biography highlights Clinical Director and co-founder, Pickles Vets, Fulham, London – an RCVS-registered, wellbeing-first membership veterinary practice Graduate of the Royal Veterinary College, London (BVetMed PgCert MRCVS), qualified 2015 Author of The Secret Life of a Vet (Hodder & Stoughton, 2020) – Amazon bestseller addressing mental health in clinical professions Lead talent and presenter, The Pets Factor, CBBC; resident vet, Blue Peter (BBC, since 2019); regular contributor to BBC Breakfast and ITV’s Lorraine Ambassador, British Dyslexia Association and StreetVet; RSPCA ambassador Co-founder, VidiVet – a digital veterinary advice platform designed to improve access and reduce workload pressure on clinical teams Nominated, Vet of the Year, Animal Star Awards (2018 and 2019) Biography The veterinary profession has one of the highest rates of burnout and mental health difficulty of any skilled workforce in the UK. Rory Cowlam has been arguing, publicly and with clinical authority, that this is not a coincidence – and not a personal failing. It is what happens when a system is designed around throughput rather than people. His 2020 book The Secret Life of a Vet, published by Hodder & Stoughton and an Amazon bestseller, made that argument in direct, first-person terms. It did not frame mental health as a welfare footnote; it placed it at the centre of what makes or breaks professional culture in high-pressure environments. As Clinical Director and co-founder of Pickles Vets in London, Cowlam has since built a practice model that tests those arguments in practice – longer appointments, staffed-to-capacity teams, and transparency on pricing as foundations for a working environment that retains talented clinicians rather than burning them out. His own dyslexia, navigated through a demanding clinical training and a broadcast career spanning The Pets Factor (CBBC), Blue Peter, BBC Breakfast, and ITV’s Lorraine, gives him a lived, professionally grounded perspective on neurodiversity that organisations rarely encounter from a speaker. He does not speak about dyslexia as a historical obstacle overcome; he speaks about it as a continuing factor in how he works, leads, and communicates. A graduate of the Royal Veterinary College and co-founder of VidiVet, a digital platform extending veterinary access, Cowlam sits at a distinctive intersection: practising clinician, published author, broadcast communicator, and operational founder. For organisations wrestling with retention, neurodiversity inclusion, and the gap between wellbeing policy and workplace reality, he offers something specific – a structural diagnosis, not a motivational remedy. Key speaking topics Mental health and burnout in high-pressure professions Neurodiversity and dyslexia in professional environments Wellbeing by design – structural approaches to workforce sustainability Veterinary practice and the realities of clinical leadership Communicating complex expertise to public audiences Animal welfare, charity engagement, and purpose at work Ideal for CHROs and people directors in healthcare, clinical, and high-pressure professional services organisations Wellbeing leads and occupational health teams Early careers and graduate development audiences in clinical and technical professions Diversity and inclusion leads focused on neurodiversity strategy Audience outcomes A reframing of mental health from individual issue to structural design question – with practical implications for how teams are built and managed Clearer language for discussing neurodiversity in professional settings, grounded in lived clinical experience rather than theory An understanding of what a wellbeing-first workplace model looks like operationally, drawn from Cowlam’s own practice at Pickles Vets Greater confidence in communicating specialist expertise to non-specialist audiences – a skill Cowlam models directly in his broadcast work Honest perspective on what high-pressure career paths actually demand, useful for early careers programmes and talent retention conversations